The Nightmare Boy
by devilberry
Summary: A silly, strange, morbid fairytale about a boy who fell in love with a nightmare.


_If this story seems like stupid bullshit, it's because it is... sorry. It was written on a whim._

_I hope you fall asleep tonight, and have beautiful nightmares._

_

* * *

_

This story is the kind of story that you'll wish you hadn't read the moment you finish it. It's a waste of your time, consideration, and eyesight. It's a song, and it's an infection, and it will be stuck in your head, and it won't leave. It's a regret. It's a mistake. Don't read it.

It's just a story, anyway. An unimportant story that's probably completely irrelevant to your life. It's just a number on a list. A skip in a record. A pointless nothing.

It's the story of a boy. The Boy. The Nightmare Boy.

At the beginning of our pointless nothing, the Boy is just a boy. A silly, stupid, unremarkable boy. A boy so dull he doesn't even have a name. Not yet.

His hair was long and blonde and dirty, because he never cut it or washed it because he didn't care. He never said anything to anyone. He never did anything besides sit there and take up space. Not even his parents loved this kid.

Maybe there's a little of this boy in everyone. Maybe no one else in the universe is like him. I can't say.

This kid, this boy, he's such a stupid nothing. Such a waste. You hate him, and he hates you. Every word that you've ever said to him is like a piece of sandpaper grating against his headache head. He wants to light you on fire, but he can't find any matches. He wants to tell you to shut up, but he doesn't talk (monsters don't talk). He doesn't have anything to say. He just walks around with his dull, droll, dead eyes and sitsitsits and takes up space. And he smiles.

He smiles because you hate him. He smiles because he can, because monsters are allowed to smile. Because his smile isn't sweet and isn't nice, but it's a smile that tells you to dig a hole. Dig a grave. Because one day, this boy's gonna kill you.

You can talk to this kid about love, and he'll look for matches. You can talk to this kid about insanity, and he'll listen.

He'll listen until he's turned himself mad. He'll make himself crazy, so he has an excuse.

"I don't talk," He'd say—if he talked. If he was insane. "I don't talk because I'm crazy."

At night, this boy doesn't sleep. He stays awake and listens to his heart go _thump, thump, thump, _in his chest and wishes he could rip it out. It's hard to sleep when your own chest is trying to hypnotize you awake. Don't listen to love songs. Heartbeats do not make good lullabies.

Heartbeats bring on nightmares.

And this is where he gets his name, our Nightmare Boy. This is where he lives while he's dead to the real world. The place where there's no one to hear him not talk. Where he's the only one who takes up any room, so no one cares. A lonely place, where the Boy has no headaches and doesn't want to start any fires or kill any people. Where he doesn't need to smile. Where he's happy. Where he has a name. The Nightmare Boy.

His tan skin is pale under a black moon and a blue sky. His lips are sewn shut, so he doesn't have to be crazy to not talk. He can't talk.

You can call it a nightmare, or you can call it a dream. It's still just a blur of thoughts and emotions and images that play out in your head while you sleep.

But, somehow, someone got in. There was someone new to take up space in the nothingnightmaredreamworld. The Boy didn't know if he liked that.

He sat under a tree and smiled through his stitched-up lips. The black moon and the red sun shined together. The Boy pulled the weeds from the ground and ripped them to shreds. That's when he saw it. A red-orange glow on the horizon, staining the midnight (or perhaps it was midday) sky. The Boy stood up and looked to see what it was. A fire. Just like the ones he always wanted to start. And here it was, his fire (even though he hadn't started it).

Then he saw the blur of white. (A blur, a nightmare, a dream. It's all the same.) A blur of white that walked closer and closer and closer to the Boy. A blur of white and black.

A boy. It was a boy. A boy with white hair, and a white body, and white clothes, and a black jacket. He had a white veil over his face (made out of either lace or cobwebs), so the Boy couldn't see his mouth. Just his eyes. His eyes as red as the red sun, or fire, or blood, or anything.

"My name is Ribcage." He says, veil muffling his words. He doesn't ask for the Boy's name. It's like he already knows it.

The Nightmare Boy fell in love as soon as he saw the bunch of matches in Ribcage's hands.

Too bad that he woke up. Too bad that his eyes unclosed themselves. Too bad that damned alarm went off. Too bad, too bad.

Reality was becoming a hassle for this boy (who, again, had no name. Because he had no names outside of "Nightmare.") He seemed to take up more space, and talk less than not at all, and needed matches more than ever. He started sleeping so long that reality felt more like a nightmare than anything else. Ribcage was the only person he'd ever talk to. (Even though he didn't talk.) The Nightmare Boy liked Ribcage so much, that he might've actually said something if his lips weren't sewn shut. But he was still happy not to say anything.

What they would do is they would set the Boy's nightmare in conflagration. Ribcage had his matches, and he would share them and they would scratch the red chemical-laced tips against the sandpaper that was always against the Boy's headaches and they would set the trees and forests and anything else on fire.

The sky was blue, the moon was black, the sun was red, and the grass was orange with fire. The perfect nightmare isn't as black and white as you'd think it would be. (But both beauty and fear are in the eye of the beholder.)

"You never asked," Ribcage said one day while they were lying in an ash-coated, burnt-up, deaddeadead field. The Nightmare Boy held a bouquet of dandelions in his hand, and was slowly spreading fire to all of them. "You never asked me about my name."

The boy tried to open his mouth, but his lips strained against the stitches and he remained silent. This irritated him enough to toss the dandelions to the side and allow them to infect whatever else they could get their flaming proverbial hands on.

"I used to have a name," Ribcage sighed. "But I lost it when I died. At least, I think I did. I'm still not sure if I'm dead or alive or what."

The Boy saw a shot of orange and red and fire explode in the distance. He gave Ribcage a sad look, because that's the best he could do.

"So I named myself," He tosses his black jacket to the side, and the Boy notices some rosy crimson stains on his friend's bright light white clothes. "I named myself Ribcage," He says, calm as calm can be, and peels and pallid shirt from his pallid body. "Because that's all I knew when I came here." And the Nightmare Boy looked down, and he saw.

Ribcage didn't have any skin. He was all bones and hair. Which is why he seemed so pale. Which is why he wore a black jacket. Which is why he used spiderwebs to cover his face. He was just a collection of muscles and organs and veins and bones and disgusting inside-things. The most noticeable feature was, obviously, the snowy white ribcage that proved to be a shell for his lungs and heart and liver. The Boy could hear it. _Thump, thump, thump. _He nearly went insane on the spot.

Instead, he buried his face in between the bloody tissue and the striking bones, and pressed his stitch-lips against Ribcage's bloody little heart organ. It _thump_ed underneath his lips. It wasn't a kiss, but it was the best he could do.

He fell asleep to the sound of Ribcage's heartbeat. He woke up in reality.

He couldn't go back to sleep.

No matter what, he couldn't do it. He could lie awake and listen to all of the _thumpthumpthump_s he wanted, he could take pills, he could count sheep, but nothing worked.

He prayed for sleep. He prayed for death. He wished for comas on stars. He hoped for a car crash every time he blew out a birthday candle. He wanted to hang himself on all of your words, and in a literal sense. He wanted to set himself on fire.

Insomnia, insomnia, insomnia.

And the Nightmare Boy was stuck. Stuck as just a boy without a name.

He never went back to nothingnightmaredreamworld.

* * *

_"To you this kid is probably just a headache, but to me he is gold."_


End file.
